Every municipality, from Pago Pago to Reykjavik, has at least one zone earmarked for the selling of used car parts – dusty lots ringed by barbed wire fences or garages reeking of machine oil littered with the mechanical detritus of the automobile age.
Guadalajara is no exception. The area around the old bus station – particularly along calles 5 de Febrero and Los Angeles – is notorious for the sale of automotive contraband.
People who patronize these lots rarely ask after the provence of the rear view mirror or the hubcap they came to purchase, an indifference usually shared by the owners of the outlets.
Raids involving municipal, state and federal authorities have been commonplace on Calle Cinco de Febrero in recent years. Most of the operations have ended in the arrests of a few vendors, mostly after they were found with stolen auto parts.
Despite these regular raids, the trade in auto parts has always carried on. But a bill before the Jalisco Congress could put a damper on this cozy, laissez-faire arrangement by which car parts are absconded with and then sold back to motorists.
The proposed law – authored by Lourdes Martinez Pizano, a congresswoman with little gift for brevity – is called The State Law for the Regulation of Used Vehicular Commercial Activities, Auto Parts and Places of Assembly of Reusable Metal Materials. It would require all vendors of used car parts to verify their merchandise’s origin and scrupulously keep track of and declare their inventory vis-a-vis the completion and turning in of a monthly invoice.
Under the law, whoever comes to an outlet looking to sell parts will be asked for his/her identification, proof of domicile and all receipts proving the items to be sold were obtained legally.
Failure to comply with every facet of the new legislation would be punishable with a fine from 36,520 to 365,000 pesos. Repeat offenders will forfeit from 73,000 to 730,000 pesos.
Tethered to the new bill is an additional clause that would require establishments dealing in used parts to undergo periodic environmental impact inspections by the Ministry of the Environment.